Production and propagation of cylindrically polarized Laguerre-Gaussian laser beams

The x-polarized and y-polarized beam modes of simple confining circularly symmetric spherical-mirror laser resonators may be represented with Laguerre-Gaussian functions. The corresponding r- and phi-polarized beam-mode profiles are found to be represented by a different Laguerre-Gaussian mode set. Though similar in name, these cylindrically polarized modes are fundamentally different from their rectangularly polarized counterparts. For example, the fundamental x-polarized mode is Gaussian, which has a maximum at the center of the beam, while the fundamental phi-polarized mode has a null at the beam center. The complete propagation characteristics of several types of azimuthally polarized Laguerre-Gaussian beams through optical systems representable by complex ABCD matrices are obtained. Cylindrically polarized Laguerre-Gaussian beams may be produced by inserting the appropriate Brewster window into a simple confining circularly symmetric laser resonator. (C) 1998 Optical Society of America.